Know your needs

Steve has just 4k monthly traffic, and he’s going to purchase a High-end VPS.

Is that right decision?

No! (Because he is going to waste his money on unnecessary thing)

Similarly,

John has more than 100k traffic per month, and he’s going purchase a basic shared plan.

Is that right choice?

Obviously not! (Because his site is getting huge traffic and for handling that, he should go with high-end VPS or any good dedicated server)

So the point is…

Before move ahead, know your website’s need.

You should have a clear path to move ahead, eighter you need a shared hosting, or VPS or Dedicated Server.

There are so many hosting companies such as A2Hosting, Bluehost, Hostgator, SiteGround, Dreamhost, and many more which provides powerful hosting services.

Now, analyze the performance of the hosting.

Performance

We’re paying for the “Performance” of hosting. Right?

While choosing a web hosting, our main objective should be “great performance within budget.” You can read reviews, opinions, real users ratings, etc. to know hows the performance of particular web hosting service.

Let’s discuss it in detail.

Uptime

99% uptime means 432 minutes of downtime per month.

99.90% uptime means 45 minutes of downtime per month.

99.99% uptime allows 5 minutes of downtime..

During these downtimes, they perform a server maintenance, hardware failure solutions, and some unexpected error’s solutions.

You should always go with hosting which offers uptime guarantee of 99.99%.

Speed

You should always go with the hosting company which providers blazing speed. You can check, server response time which indicates the first response duration from a server. quicker is better (in ms)

From a user’s point of view, site speed is the page load time of the user’s website. And, it depends on different factors such as…

Webpage size

Images and Videos size

Server configuration

Server Location

Server response time

User’s own page redirects, etc.

You can perform speed tests at some speed testing sites such as Pingdom and GTmetrics.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the rate of data allowed to pass through the internet between users and your website.

Actually, it’s a maximum rate of the data transfer. That means it is an amount of data which can be transferred at a given time.

So, higher bandwidth can give you better speed and connectivity.

You should always try to go with as possible as higher bandwidth within your budget.

Storage

It is a disk space of your server which you can use to store your data. More space means more data can be stored. While choosing hosting, go with the one which gives enough space to host your files at an affordable price.

Many hosting companies provide SSD drives. SSD’s are awesome. It can speed up your file transfer and eventually speed up your site. Don’t forget to check that the company provides SSD storage or a normal one.

RAM (If VPS or Dedicated)

RAM is the memory that serves temporary data when your website is serving more than one processes at the same time. For example: Any script execution of your website.

More RAM means more processes can be handled. If you’re getting a good amount of traffic and your hosting plan doesn’t have enough RAM to handle that traffic, it will show ‘500 internal server error’ to the user.

Pricing

Hosting should be in your budget. There are many overpriced hosting services on the web. Estimate your website’s need (be logical) and according to that move further. You should always go with the hosting which can handle your traffic within your budget.

In pricing, it varies with the type of hosting as well as specifications and features.

For example,

If you’re going to buy VPS, with 50GB of storage, 1 TB bandwidth, and 1 GB of RAM then its price would be less than another plan of 50GB of storage, 1 TB bandwidth, 2 GB RAM.

Features, configuration, and type of hosting plays an important role in pricing.

So, Over to you…

You have to decide your requirement first and according to that figure out your required configuration.

And finally based on your configuration requirements, choose the hosting.

Interface

The hosting interfaces are simple, easy to use or complicated (where you need more technical knowledge to work with). There are many hosting provides where you have to manage all the things yourself. At the other side, many are with easy to use management system such as cPanel.

So, before choosing your host, confirm that “is it easy to manage?” “The interface of hosting is good or not?”

Support

Many hosting companies sucks here. Overall they are good, but when coming to their support, they are horrible.

See guys, If anything goes wrong with your website (server down because of sudden traffic increment, maintenance downtime, or any configuration error) you need a support to make the thing working again.

Am I Right?

If your hosting company have a good support, your any problem or error can be solved within few minutes (via call, live chat, or mail)

So, a good support can help you to make your site working all the time, or even something goes wrong, that could be fixed instantly.

So, guys make sure to check, hows the support of web hosting which you’re going to purchase.

What people say about (Real users Reviews)

How great if you could know “how is the hosting before you purchase or even use?”

If you’re thinking to go with any particular hosting company, do check their reviews and see where they are good at and where they are not. If their pros/goods are your main requirements then you can go with it.

So, before purchasing a hosting, make sure to read their existing user’s reviews.

Other things

Some web hosting providers give add-ons for free such as website builder, Marketing packages, etc. You should look for these kinds of things if you want to take the max out of it.

Money back guarantee

Nowadays, every web hosting company provides the “Money Back Guarantee.” And, it is important too.

If you’re not comfortable with the hosting you purchased, you can easily get your money back (during guarantee period). So, make sure to check money back guarantee. Most of the companies offer, 30 days or 45 days or 90 days money back guarantee.

SSL

SSL is now very important. Right?

It helps your website make secure as well as looks trustworthy. Check that your hosting offers free SSL or not. Some companies give it away for free to their new users.

Bonuses and Marketing Packages

Many hosting companies offers bonuses such as 100$ Google AdWord credit, So, you should take a look at there too.

Is it a perfect fit for your needs?

Finally, After analyzing all the things confirm that “Is it a perfect fit for your needs?”

If “Yes” then go for it!

Here is the checklist of important things to check while choosing the hosting plan.

Hey, there. I'm Ravijit Chavda, the founder of bloggingbook. I love to create blogs as well as share my experiences through blogging. I am a passionate blogger with having years of experience in blogging and internet marketing.